Video

Why Rotten Tomatoes scores don't mean what they seem

EDIT: At 2:57, a previous version of this video mistakenly featured a clip from Atonement. The video has since been updated to feature a clip of Dunkirk.

The Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer maintains high status in today’s Hollywood. A certified fresh badge can act like a marketing tool for a film. So filmmakers are sensitive to how their work fares on the platform. But the Tomatometer number you see measures something different than quality — it measures consensus.

Earlier this summer, some executives criticized the platform, saying that critics tanked their summer hits. Films like Baywatch, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and The Mummy all performed below expectations at the box office. Hollywood needed a scapegoat. Because Fandango, one of the largest online ticket-distributors, features the tomatometer at the point-of purchase, Rotten Tomatoes seemed the perfect target for the ire of executives.

But when you look closely at how Rotten Tomatoes works, it becomes clear that the service is mainly good at measuring critical consensus, not quality. That’s due to how the Tomatometer is calculated.

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